FreeCAD: Your own 3D parametric modeler
www.freecad.org
FreeCAD, the open source 3D parametric modeler
  • FizzyOrange
    6·
    1 month ago

    I tried FreeCAD years ago and it sucked balls. The best FOSS CAD software that I currently know of is SolveSpace.

    However it has been a few years. Maybe they discovered UX… I will give it another try and report back!

    • FizzyOrange
      13·
      1 month ago

      Ok first impressions:

      1. Rotate is Shift-Right-Click?? Very weird default choice. Most programs use middle-click.
      2. I created a simple sketch with a couple of slots. Surprisingly smooth! Vastly improved from when I last tried it. Still not quite as good as SolveSpace for sketch creation, but to be fair SolveSpace was originally created to demo of a state of the art sketch solver… I couldn’t find the Dimension tool, but guessed the shortcut was D, which was correct.
      3. Extrude is misnamed as “Pad”. Why?
      4. Clone icon is a sheep :-D - actually the icons are all pretty great.
      5. Cut is called “Pocket”?? Actually the icon for this is not great. Minor issue though.

      I only made a very simple part, but I am impressed. This is significantly better than when I last tried it, when it basically didn’t work at all. I haven’t tried assemblies or anything complex (e.g. extruding up to a non-flat surface, degenerate geometry etc.), but definitely for simple tasks you could use it.

      • Maalus@lemmy.world
        5·
        1 month ago

        It’s night and day, even between the “previous” version and this 1.0 release. You can change the navigation, they have presets that mimic other CAD programs / modelling software, so you can even have Blender style shortcuts if you want to for some reason.

      • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.ukEnglish
        1·
        1 month ago

        Pad and pocket are the same nomenclature as CATIA. Not sure if I’ve changed controls at some point, but hold middle mouse, click right mouse is how I rotate. New dimension tool, I’m not a huge fan of, but might just need some practice, for reference L and I give horizontal and vertical dimensions.

        Need to get on with a project to try V1.0 out again soon.

    • agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      1 month ago

      Ondsel was a suite of mods that made FreeCAD much more user friendly. V1.0 incorporates most of these, and I didn’t really have any major complaints about it. I used older versions, and yeah they sucked balls. It’s better now.